It will already have become clear to the reader that sociology is a very wide subject. The things that different sociologists do are very different, so much so that it is not always easy to see how they are related. To take two extreme cases, sociologist A spends almost all his time reading the books and articles written by other sociologists, and from time to time writes books himself on subjects like ‘How far were Max Weber's ideas influenced by those of Karl Marx?’, or ‘Is a classless society possible?’ Sociologist B, on the other hand, has little time for reading; he spends his days in the headquarters office of a business firm, designing questionnaires and organizing interviewers to find out whether people have heard that Solso soap washes whiter, or how they intend to vote at the next election. Yet both would call themselves sociologists, and would be acceptable as members of a learned body such as the British or American Sociological Association.

In this chapter I will try to list, with examples, the range of activities carried on under the name of sociology and to see the common thread that runs through them all. As before I use the word sociology as short for sociology-and-social-anthropology.

I will begin by dividing the activities of sociologists into factfinding and theory. As we shall see this distinction is nowadays less important than it was in the past and will have to be blurred somewhat later.